US attacks on Muslims abroad is not a war on Islam - Obama

“Muslim Americans across our country are worried and afraid,” President Barack Obama wrote in a new op-ed to tout the “countering violent extremism” summit in Washington this week that focuses almost exclusively on homegrown Islamic terrorism.

By and large, Obama’s Los Angeles Times op-ed detailed his administration’s efforts
to quell “terrorism” abroad, as the president ticked off
all of America’s Islamic extremist targets across the globe,
including Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the
Pakistani Taliban, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram. He included
smaller groups or actors that have recently attacked Ottawa,
Sydney, Paris, and Copenhagen.

“In the face of this challenge, we must stand united
internationally and here at home,” Obama wrote. “We know
that military force alone cannot solve this problem. Nor can we
simply take out terrorists who kill innocent civilians. We also
have to confront the violent extremists — the propagandists,
recruiters and enablers — who may not directly engage in
terrorist acts themselves, but who radicalize, recruit and incite
others to do so.”

Last week, Obama called for Congress to renew US authority
for the use of military force to target Islamic State (IS, also
known as ISIS and ISIL), the jihadist group that has come to
control large areas of Iraq and Syria since the beginning of the
latter nation’s civil war. Though the US has led airstrikes
against IS in Iraq since August, Obama said his request – with no
specific geographic limitations applied to US forces – was needed
to show a united front against IS and "associated persons or
forces," or those who fight on behalf or with the group, as
well as "any closely-related successor entity in hostilities
against the United States or its coalition partners."

Obama said America’s pluralism will win the day, as he stressed
that the US is not at war with Islam.

“Finally — with al Qaeda and ISIL peddling the lie that the
United States is at war with Islam — all of us have a role to
play by upholding the pluralistic values that define us as
Americans,” he wrote in lauding the anti-extremism summit.
“This week, we'll be joined by people of many faiths,
including Muslim Americans who make extraordinary contributions
to our country every day. It's a reminder that America is
successful because we welcome people of all faiths and
backgrounds.”

This week at the White House and the US State Department, the
Obama administration is holding the “countering violent
extremism” (CVE) summit in order to forge bonds between law
enforcement and community leaders from areas at risk for
homegrown terrorism. The meeting stems from a pilot program that
the US Department of Justice began to “develop comprehensive
local strategies” to combat extremism while sowing trust
between law enforcement and Muslim communities in Boston, Los
Angeles and Minneapolis.

Domestically, the CVE summit comes at a volatile time in light of
recent attacks and crimes targeting Muslims in America, most
notably the murder last week of three young Muslims in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina.

Some American Muslim leaders say the summit is dangerous for
Muslim communities in that it singles out Islam as a violent
ideology.

“We’ve long said to the administration, to those in
government, that directing the bulk of CVE resources to US
Muslims undermines the safety of all of us and endangers US
Muslims, because it sends the message our community is to be
viewed with fear, suspicion and even hate,” Farhana Khera,
executive director of civil rights law firm Muslim Advocates,
told The Guardian.

The Justice Department’s “local strategies” program and
the summit are also viewed with skepticism by American Muslims
that have been the target of hateful attacks, the subject of
invasive surveillance programs, and the focus of
degrading insults from major politicians.

Will any CVE programs cover the KKK, hate groups, including
along the border that are killing individuals? #CVEspeakout

Corey Saylor of the Council on American Islamic Relations told
The Guardian that the distrust of government efforts will take
time to heal, as “too often in the past you’ve had this hand
reached out in friendship while the other is behind their back
with handcuffs in it.”

In
December, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced
heightened racial profiling deterrents for law enforcement
agencies, yet Muslim leaders protested because the rules made
glaring exceptions for border patrol and “national security
concerns.”

Those exceptions are "distressing, particularly because
Latinos and religious minorities are disproportionately
affected,” the ACLU's Washington legislative director Laura
Murphy told Reuters at the time.

The Chapel
Hill murders are being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The suspect in the killing, Craig Stephen Hicks, was a neighbor
of the trio -- Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad
Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 --
and their conflict is said to have stemmed from issues over
parking outside their apartment complex. The victims’ family,
however, disagreed with police, calling it a clear “hate
crime” and an “execution.”

In recent days, a Muslim school in Rhode Island was vandalized
with anti-Islamic graffiti and a
fire erupted in a vacant building on the Quba Islamic
Institute campus in southeast Houston. The Houston incident is
being investigated as a possible accident by a homeless man
seeking shelter.

In the last few years, specifically anti-Muslim crimes have made
up about 13 or 14 percent of hate crimes considered to be
committed with a religious bias. That amounts to nearly 100
anti-Islam hate crimes each year from 2011 to 2013, according
to FBI data.

During his six years in office, the Obama administration has
ordered bombings in at least
seven predominantly-Muslim nations, not to mention its
ongoing collaboration with terror-funding nations such as Saudi
Arabia, and, of course, its undying allegiance to Israel and its
subjugation of occupied Palestinians.

Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, keeps a 'kill
list' of alleged terror suspects in many of those same Muslim
countries, most notably in Pakistan if the amount of unmanned
lethal drone strikes there is any indication. Of the thousands
killed in Pakistan by US drones, a very
small percentage of them are believed to have been confirmed
militants.